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Comment by neRok | Hacker News Reader

Just to confirm the numbers myself;

18,300kg methane per hour * 24 hours * 365 days = 160,308,000kg (~0.160 million metric tonnes). At 25x CO2 equivalent, that is 4,007,700,000kg (4 million metric tonnes).

This link about US electricity generation: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 shows 767 "million metric tons" from coal, or 1.55 "billion metric tons" from all sources.

4 / 767 ~= 0.5%, so in the ballpark of the parent comment. Also possibly the second link is ton (~1016kg) vs tonne (1000kg), further tweaking the numbers.

And just about the Permian basin, Wikipedia says it "accounts for 20% of US crude oil production and 7% of US dry natural gas production" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian_Basin_(North_America)#... So if all sites like this were measured, it might be more like 2.5% coal-use-equivalent?

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At 25x CO2 equivalent

Where do you get the 25x from? Wikipedia says it's 80x-100x:

> over a 20-year period, [methane] traps 84 times more heat per mass unit than carbon dioxide (CO2) and 105 times the effect when accounting for aerosol interactions

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane)

After that 20 years, methane decomposes into CO2 so its long-term contribution is 3x CO2 equivalent (due to the higher mass after acquiring the oxygen atoms), so its lifetime CO2 equivalence can be higher or lower than 25x depending on which timescale you're looking at. Is the 25x an oft-used figure in the industry/literature?

The 100 year global warming potential seems to be a pretty common way to compare greenhouse gases. It makes sense when you discuss things like, say, limiting warming to N degrees by 2100 or long-term climate change, but I agree that the caveat that "it's much, much, much worse on shorter time scales" should be emphasized way more than it is. Especially given the current situation.

It was just my first google result for "methane co2 equivalent", and so the number came from this link (am Australian) - https://www.cleanenergyregulator.gov.au/NGER/About-the-Natio...

You are right that there are different valid factors to consider, as can be seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential

But also, 25x vs 100x is a 4x difference, which doesn't affect the comparison to coal that much (it's still single digit % "at best").

HN'ers seething - you can't beat cheap fossil fuels for base load capacity (ask Germany)

Only thing that trumps fossil fuels is nuclear - instead of the EU chasing Apple over USB-C ports, why don't they come up with some subsidies for better reactor designs?

What does this have to be with satisfying base load capacity without fossil fuels? Or USB-C?

"What does this have to be with satisfying base load capacity without fossil fuels?"

If you think inflation is high now, try making this a reality.

The EU isn't a serious political body - instead of getting everyone at the table to solve hard problems, they chase nonsense.

> The EU isn't a serious political body - instead of getting everyone at the table to solve hard problems, they chase nonsense.

As opposed to gridlock in US congress or UK changing 3 prime ministers in 1 year?

There has been a marked decline in the quality of western political leadership, its not just EU

It turns out they can do more than one thing at once.

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